Sine Qua Non
by icepixel
Summary: That without which we cannot live does not always remain constant. Fraser/Thatcher, established relationship.


**Note: **Okay, I appear to have inadvertently cobbled together a sort-of-not-quite series, and I suppose I should explain myself. This is very loosely set in the same universe as "This Gray Spirit Yearning" and "Snow Day," but it's not in any way essential to read them as a unit. I do actually plan to write a thematic sequel to "Gray Spirit," set a couple years after the events of this fic, but again not necessarily making an explicit series out of anything. Plus there's room for all kinds of little fics and ficlets in between any of the ones that already exist, so...yeah. There will probably be more. :)

* * *

When they return to Chicago after capturing Holloway Muldoon and Cyrus Bolt, change hums like an electrical current in the air. Ray Vecchio has returned to the twenty-seventh, and it seems his fondest wish is going to be realized, if for a bittersweet reason: Ray and Ray have agreed to a trial partnership, since he will no longer be working with them.

His transfer request, along with Meg's, sits on an end table in her apartment, filled out except for two fields: where they'd like to be transferred, and reason for requesting reassignment. The papers have been waiting like that since before their trip up north, and for the past three days since their return.

(_This is your home, isn't it?_ she'd asked that night in the camp, before they left to make their last stand against Bolt. _Yes,_ he'd told her, knowing she'd see right through him if he said otherwise. In the flickering firelight, he'd watched her heart break as she closed her eyes, and then saw her erase all traces of it from her expression by the time she opened them again.)

Tomorrow they're going to have to send the forms in; Superintendent Dell has been waiting for their requests. He fingers the piece of paper with his name on it.

Meg walks into the room, her bare feet making almost no sound on the carpet. She places her hand on his shoulder, and he turns, finding her face as open as he's ever seen it. "I'll come with you," she says. "I'll come with you if you really can't live without it."

It's perhaps the greatest gift she could give him.

But he won't accept it. He won't, because he's been doing a lot of thinking lately, since seeing his parents disappear into the mist at the bottom of a mine shaft. He isn't his father. They may be formed from the same mold, but he is his own man, with his own choices to make, something he isn't sure he truly realized until the moment his parents walked away from him.

And he thinks—as he tells her—that while there are other people who can track a criminal across a hundred miles of frozen tundra using only a compass, a good nose, and a willingness to put foreign objects in their mouth, he's one of the few who can do it in a city. And though the north will always be his home, he wants to use his talents where they'll do the most good.

She embraces him then, and he pretends not to notice the dampness he can feel on her cheek when she rests her head on his shoulder.

They spend half the night talking about their future, and as they do, more reasons for choosing a city come up. The thing is, they really don't want to work together anymore.

"This is selfish," she says, "but if I had to assign you to a case, or order you to do something I knew there was a good chance you wouldn't come back from...I don't know if I could do it."

(He thinks she could, because they're the same inside, and both of them live for something bigger than just themselves. But then he remembers finding her with a gun to her head, and Randall Bolt uncoupling the caboose from the train. Maybe they're even more alike than he realized.)

"Besides," she continues, "no matter how politically inconvenient you are, you're long overdue for a promotion. I won't have anyone thinking it's because we're..."—she waves her hand, words for everything they've become to each other failing her—"and not entirely on your own merits."

She's always been so much better at handling the political implications of every action than he is. That's another reason he doesn't want to return to the north: her career would stall. There are simply too few positions for her to be promoted into, and she's too ambitious to be entirely content with stopping where she is. And he's discovered that if she's unhappy, he finds it impossible not to be so as well.

Funny, that.

She's the one who suggests the western provinces, while they're sitting at the little table in her kitchen, the forms in front of them. Because working at headquarters back east would remove her from fieldwork entirely, and she's not quite ready for that, she explains. And because, she says as she nudges his shoulder playfully, "I'd like to spend some time in this cabin of your father's you keep talking about, and not have to fly the _entire_ day to get there."

He's fairly certain he would know if she were doing this out of some misplaced sense of guilt over moving to a city and not the wilderness, but he asks if she's sure anyway, just in case. In response, she takes her pen and writes, "Western Canada, urban district," on her form.

"Now we just need to put in our reasons," she says once he follows suit.

He takes the pen from her hand and wraps his fingers around hers. "First I have a question for you."

She meets his eyes, and he can tell she already knows what he's going to ask. He's always been an open book to her. "Ben," she starts, on her way to saying yes before he even asks the question.

He places two fingers on her mouth, gently. "Since this is the only time in my life I plan on making this kind of proposal, if you don't mind, I'd like to actually say the words."

Behind his hand, she smiles and murmurs, "All right."

He asks, and she says yes, and he thinks even the first moment after his parachuteless jump from Muldoon's plane cannot quite compare to this one.

The next morning, she staples their forms together, along with a note for the superintendent mentioning their engagement. He goes with her to drop them into the mailbox, and on the way they see that the day is going to be sunny. The ridges of snow plowed up over the long winter have already started the long process of dwindling away.

It's spring in Chicago, and change is in the air.


End file.
